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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26815489">Shape without form, shade without colour</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/silvercolour/pseuds/silvercolour'>silvercolour</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Bleak but not cruel, Canon-typical world horror, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Kissing, M/M, No beta only fic, Season 5 compliant, Traveling, bleak endings, hand-holding</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 00:13:21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,778</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26815489</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/silvercolour/pseuds/silvercolour</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>These are snapshots of their journey, and the places between the horrors of this new and awful world, as Jon and Martin travel ever onwards.</p><p>Inspired by “The Hollow Men” by T.S. Elliot</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Shape without form, shade without colour</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>The title of this fic and all quotes in italics are from the poem The Hollow Men, by T.S. Elliot, which you should definitely check out in its entirety, because it has a lot of tma vibes.<br/>There are/will be (time is fake) other fics for this poem in the collection, as we used the poem as a writing prompts with some lovely discord friends &lt;3<br/>Have a look at their fics too!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em> Is it like this<br/>
</em> <em>In death’s other kingdom<br/>
</em> <em>Waking alone<br/>
</em> <em>At the hour when we are<br/>
</em> <em>Trembling with tenderness<br/>
</em> <em>Lips that would kiss<br/>
</em> <em>Form prayers to broken stone</em></p><p> </p><p>Martin isn’t sure how long they’ve been walking. Of course, the careful, cruel certainty of passing time has left them long ago. Still, until recently Martin felt like their travels could at least be divided into some kind of “hours” and “days” and more rarely “weeks”, as they passed the domains and the empty places in between.</p><p>The places between are no better than the domains of the Fears, although there do not appear to be any active threats in there. So far.</p><p>The spaces between are empty, vast wastelands, empty darknesses, and brightly lit deserts with neither too much heat to tip the place into the Desolation, nor so cold and distant as to make it Lonely. Everywhere you look is hollow, filled only with an absence of things that might give it meaning, or purpose. This specific Between is a vacant stretch of sandy land that makes walking more exhausting with every step. It might’ve been a beach, except there is no sea. There might have been something to see, except there is no wind to make patterns in the sand. Behind them their footprints disappear in the sand, vanishing after a few yards. It’s impossible to tell how far they’ve come.</p><p>Every time they reach a next domain Martin finds himself wishing for that comfortless hollow feeling, a cold almost-but-not-quite-Lonely, a thing waiting to be turned into a horror. Because the between-spaces are a horror in their own way, but at least they mean that he doesn’t actively have to fear for his own safety. Or Jon's safety for that matter. For no matter what he says or how quickly he heals, Martin will not stop worrying for Jon. He just won’t.</p><p>But somehow the Between they’re in now is different.</p><p>Because Martin does not know how long they’ve been walking through it. A creeping, lurking dread has been following Martin’s thoughts, ever since he realised that he could no longer tell his fake-time. They may have been here for minutes, or hours, or a year, Martin couldn’t say.</p><p>Could it be that this place is closer to becoming a domain? Perhaps it’s just that this one is closer to their goal, and all between space after this will be like this one? Martin really, <em> really </em>hopes he’s wrong about that last thought. </p><p>He stands still suddenly, and Jon bumps into his back.</p><p>“Martin? Something wrong?” Jon’s surprise is audible, and his question seems impossibly loud in the emptiness that surrounds them.</p><p>“I… No, nothing wrong,” Martin says. He tries to be quiet but his own voice too seems too-loud for this place. </p><p>“Are you–” Jon cuts off his own question as a static whisper races through the air. Even now he has trouble controlling that power sometimes, but Martin loves all the more him for trying so very hard not to use it. “You don’t sound sure,” Jon settles on instead.</p><p>“Nothing’s wrong– not really,” Martin searches for the best way to explain it. The emptiness around them holds no answers as he searches the horizon. “This place feels different than the previous ones? I don’t know, there’s something about it that bothers me.” The hollow silence returns as Martin finishes his 360 search of the bare landscape and turns to face Jon. </p><p>“I just wanted to not be walking for a moment, for something about this stupid place to change from this bloody endless hike to a horizon that never gets closer and–“ Martin takes a deep breath. “And so I had to stop for a moment. I guess I figured if this place can’t change then I can change what I’m doing in it? That’s probably a silly thought.”</p><p>“It’s not,” a small smile tugs at Jon’s lip before he stands up on the tips of his toes and presses a kiss to Martin’s lips. Then he clarifies: “It’s not silly, but this place is also no different. It’s all a variation of the same nothingness the other places between have been.”</p><p>Martin leans his head forward, touching their noses and foreheads together: “If you say so, Jon. I’ll try not to let it get to me.”</p><p>Jon’s smile turns apologetic: “And if it makes you feel any better, there's another domain coming soon.”</p><p>“Ah,” Martin stands up straight, and rubs a hand through his hair. “Yeah, no, that’s… I guess that’s… That might be an improvement on my opinion of this place, but it doesn’t make me feel any better.”</p><p>“I’m sorry.”</p><p>“‘S alright. You didn’t plan these places.”</p><p>They walk on into the nothing that continues to feel dreadfully close. It’s still better than where they find themselves after.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p><em> The eyes are not here<br/>
</em> <em>There are no eyes here<br/>
</em> <em>In this valley of dying stars <br/>
</em> <em>(In this hollow valley<br/>
</em> <em>This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms)</em></p><p> </p><p>It’s dark where they finally find a safe place to rest. So dark in fact, that Jon has been holding Martin's hand to lead him through the valley they’re traversing. Martin knows it is a valley only because Jon said it was. It is far too dark to see more than a few feet in any direction, the darkness not quite complete, but still covering the landscape in a deep static blanket of deathly quiet.</p><p>Nothing moves here, save them. Nothing can be heard, save for their own footsteps. A darkness obscures everything in a way that isn’t the Dark, but simply the absence of any kind of light. Martin thinks he can see a handful of lost stars overhead, but they serve more as reminders of the lack of light than anything else.</p><p>“We can rest here,” Jon speaks up.</p><p>Martin looks around himself, then wonders why he bothered: “It looks the same as every other part of this place, for what little I can see of it. What makes this place better than a mile ago?”</p><p>“It’s– well, not the middle of <em> this </em> place, exactly. It’s just equally far from where we were as from where we are headed next,” Jon replies, and somehow Martin is sure that when Jon says ‘equally far’ he means <em> exactly </em> equidistant between the two.</p><p>“Sounds like a great place to me.”</p><p>“Hm, I thought so too,” Jon sounds only slightly smug about it.</p><p>“Sooo, is it safe for me to sit down here, or...?” he trails off. Martin has learned it’s best to ask before attempting. Last time he tried to sit down in a location Jon had deemed “safe enough” there had been quicksand just beyond the trail, and his trousers had been soaking wet for an indeterminate amount of time that felt like days after that.</p><p>“This way,” a small tug on his hand as Jon leads him a few steps away from what may or may not be a path. Suddenly he finds himself standing in front of a fallen tree, its brethren still standing tall around it.</p><p>With a small sigh of relief Martin lets go of Jon’s hand, shrugs off his backpack, and flops down onto the tree. Then a thought occurs to him: “There’s no statement you have to record here, right?”</p><p>“Hm?” Jon sounds surprised. “No, why?”</p><p>“I’m– it’s just… It’s so dark here. I can’t see a thing and I– I hate the thought of you going off somewhere in this darkness, somewhere I’d lose sight of you. And then I’d be alone in here…,” he has to fight to not put a capital A on that specific ‘alone’. It’s not the same, not by a long shot, and this is no domain of the Lonely. And yet. He doesn’t want to be alone here.</p><p>“Oh Martin,” Jon murmurs, and joins him on the tree. They stay there for what feels like a long time, seated in dark emptiness.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p><em> Between the idea<br/>
</em> <em>And the reality<br/>
</em> <em>between the motion<br/>
</em> <em>And the act<br/>
</em> <em>Falls the shadow</em></p><p> </p><p>It gets no easier. Neither their travel through the domains, nor passing through the spaces between them. Martin begins to wonder, somewhere after that valley of shadows, if perhaps it seemed less difficult before because the horrors they saw were fresher, newer. Perhaps he was simply too distracted by what happened, and the fear of what they would see next, that the Betweens seemed a respite, if not the most welcome one.</p><p>That changed somewhere on the endless flat sea of sands. Now they seem to hold a terror all their own. It is a shadow of the Fears, but still somehow a part of them.</p><p>When Martin asks Jon still says that nothing changed, that these places are empty still, and the exact same as they have been from the start.</p><p>Martin cannot help but be reminded of the statement that Oliver Banks left for Jon in the domain that belonged to the End. He had talked about how all this was going to end, about how the End would eventually be all that was left, as this dread world consumed itself, consumed it’s resources, it’s people.</p><p>Martin wonders if perhaps Banks was wrong. If everything has ended, if there is nothing else left to end, what then is the End supposed to do? Would it sit there eternally, sated by victory, digesting all that they have demolished? It seems unlikely to Martin.</p><p>If he’s learned anything at all, both in the world before and in this awful new place that still calls itself their world, it is that the Fears are insatiable. It seems far more likely that if the End is the very last thing remaining, it will end itself. If it really came to that, the End would be the only thing left that could still end. And Martin has come to learn that all Fears, especially in this place, strive towards their purpose with an all-consuming single-mindedness.</p><p>And yet even that thought scares Martin. When all has Ended, and there is truly nothing left, will the whole world be like those spaces in between? Will the earth turn into a ceaseless parade of not-places, of hollow lands and empty views, with nothing to fill it, and no one left to see it?</p><p>The very idea leaves Martin cold, shivers of fear crawling up his skin.  Perhaps these places really do have a terror of their own, regardless of what Jon says.</p><p> </p><p><em> This is the way the world ends<br/>
</em><em>This is the way the world </em> <em> ends</em><br/>
<em>This is the way the world ends<br/>
</em><em>Not with a bang but with a wh</em><em>imper</em></p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Wow I sure hope I’m wrong, I say, as I write some bleak af thoughts about our local no-happy-endings podcast. Here’s to hoping…Until then, can I interest you in <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Silvertmahcweek">some hurt/comfort fics?</a></p><p>Thank you for reading! Please leave a comment and let me know what you think, I love hearing from you guys!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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